THE EXPLANATION CAMPAIGN
1
It will be generally admitted that Acts are not good at explaining
themselves, and call for words to explain them; many words, so many that
it is at times wondered whether the Acts are worth it. It occurred about
this time to the Ministry of Brains that more words were called for to
explain both the Mental Progress Act recently passed and the Mind
Training Act which was still a Bill. For neither of these Acts seemed to
have yet explained itself, or been explained, to the public, in such a
manner as to give general satisfaction. And yet explanations had to be
given with care. Acts, like lawyers' deeds, do not care to be understood
through and through. The kind of explaining they really need, as Kitty
Grammont observed, is the kind called explaining away. For this task she
considered herself peculiarly fitted by training, owing to having had in
her own private career several acts which had demanded it. It was
perhaps for this reason that she was among those chosen by the
authorities for the Explanation Campaign. The Explanation Campaign was
to be fought in the rural villages of England, by bands of speakers
chosen for their gift of the ready word, and it would be a tough fight.
The things to be explained were the two Acts above mentioned.
"And none of mine," Kitty remarked to Prideaux, "ever needed so much
explanation as these will.... Let me see, no one ever even tried to
explain any of the Military Service Acts, did they? At least only in the
press. The perpetrators never dared to face the public man to man, on
village greens."
"It ought to have been done more," Prideaux said. "The Review of
Exceptions, for instance. If questions and complaints could have been
got out of the public in the open, and answered on village greens, as
you say, instead of by official letters which only made things worse, a
lot of trouble might have been avoided. Chester is great on these
heart-to-heart talks.... By the way, he's going to interview all the
Explanation people individually before they start, to make sure they're
going about it in the right spirit."
"That's so like Chester; he'll go to any trouble," Kitty said. "I'm
getting to think he's a really great man."
2
Chester really did interview them all. To Kitty, whom already he knew
personally, he talked freely.
"You must let the people in," he said, walking about the room, his hands
in his pockets. "Don't keep them at official arm's length. Let them feel
_part_ of it all.... Make them catch fire with the idea of it.... It's
sheer stark truth--intelligence _is_ the thing that counts--if only
everyone would see it. Make them see stupidity for the limp, hopeless,
helpless, animal thing it is--an idiot drivelling on a green"--Kitty
could have fancied that he shuddered a little--"make them hate it--want
the other thing; want it so much that they'll even sacrifice a little of
their personal comfort and desires to get it for themselves and their
children. They must want it more than money, more than comfort, more
than love, more than freedom.... You'll have to get hold of different
people in different ways, of course; some have imaginations and some
haven't; those who haven't must be appealed to through their common
sense, if any, or, failing any, their feeling for their children, or,
even, at the lowest, their fear of consequences.... Tell some of them
there'll be another war if they're so stupid; tell others they'll never
get on in the world; anything you think will touch the spot. But first,
always, try to collar their imaginations.... You've done some public
speaking, haven't you?"
Kitty owned it, and he nodded.
"That's all right, then; you'll know how to keep your finger on the
audience's pulse.... You'll make them laugh, too...."
Kitty was uncertain, as she left the presence, whether this last was an
instruction or a prophecy.
3
The other members of Kitty's party (the Campaign was to be conducted in
parties of two or three people each) did not belong to the Ministry;
they were hired for it for this purpose. They were a lady doctor,
prominent on public platforms and decorated for signal services to her
country during the Great War, and a free-lance clergyman known for his
pulpit eloquence and the caustic wit with which he lashed the social
system. He had resigned his incumbency long ago in order to devote
himself the more freely to propaganda work for the causes he had at
heart, wrote for a labour paper, and went round the country speaking.
The Minister of Brains (who had been at Cambridge with him, and read his
articles in the labour paper, in which he frequently stated that
muddle-headedness was the curse of the world) had, with his usual eye
for men, secured him to assist in setting forth the merits of the Brains
Acts.
They began in Buckinghamshire, which was one of the counties assigned to
them. At Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield it was chilly, and they held
their meetings respectively in the National School and in the bright
green Parish Hall which is the one blot on a most picturesque city. But
at Little Chantreys it was fine, and they met at six o'clock in the
broad open space outside the church. They had a good audience. The
meeting had been well advertised, and it seemed that the village was as
anxious to hear the Brains Acts explained as the Ministry was to explain
them. Or possibly the village, for its own part, had something it wished
to explain. Anyhow they came, rich and poor, high and low, men, women,
children, and infants in arms (these had, for the most part, every
appearance of deserving heavy taxation; however, the physiognomy of
infants is sometimes misleading). Anthony Grammont and Pansy were there,
with the Cheeper, now proud in his baptismal name of Montmorency. The
vicar and his wife were there too, though Mr. Delmer did not approve
much of the Reverend Stephen Dixon, rightly thinking him a disturbing
priest. It was all very well to advocate Life and Liberty in moderation
(though Mr. Delmer did not himself belong to the society for promoting
these things in the Church), but the vicar did not believe that any
church could stand, without bursting, the amount of new wine which
Stephen Dixon wished to pour into it. "He is very much in earnest," was
all the approval that he could, in his charity, give to this priest. So
he waited a little uneasily for Dixon's remarks on the Brains Acts,
feeling that it might become his ungracious duty to take public
exception to some of them.
The scene had its picturesqueness in the evening sunshine--the open
space in which the narrow village streets met, backed by the little grey
church, and with a patch of green where women and children sat; and in
front of these people standing, leisurely, placid, gossiping, the women
innocently curious to hear what the speakers from London had to say
about this foolish business there was such an upset about just now; some
of the men more aggressive, determined to stand no nonsense, with a
we'll-know-the-reason-why expression on their faces. This expression was
peculiarly marked on the countenance of the local squire, Captain
Ambrose. He did not like all this interfering, socialist what-not, which
was both upsetting the domestic arrangements of his tenants and trying
to put into their heads more learning than was suitable for them to
have. For his part he thought every man had a right to be a fool if he
chose, yes, and to marry another fool, and to bring up a family of fools
too. Damn it all, fools or not, hadn't they shed their blood for their
country, and where would the country have been without them, though now
the country talked so glibly of not allowing them to reproduce
themselves until they were more intelligent. Captain Ambrose, a
fragile-looking man, burnt by Syrian suns and crippled by British
machine-guns at instruction classes (a regrettable mistake which of
course would not have occurred had the operator been more intelligent),
stood in the forefront of the audience with intention to heckle. Near
him stood the Delmers and Miss Ponsonby and Anthony Grammont. Pansy was
talking, in her friendly, cheerful way, to Mrs. Delmer about the
Cheeper's food arrangements, which were unusual in one so young.
In the middle of the square were Dr. Cross, graceful, capable-looking
and grey-haired; Stephen Dixon, lean and peculiar (so the village
thought); Kitty Grammont, pale after the day's heat, and playing with
her dangling pince-nez; a tub; and two perambulators, each containing an
infant; Mrs. Rose's and Mrs. Dean's, as the village knew. The lady
doctor had been round in the afternoon looking at all the babies and
asking questions, and had finally picked these two and asked if they
might be lent for the meeting. But what use was going to be made of the
poor mites, no one knew.
Dr. Cross was on the tub. She was talking about the already existing
Act, the Mental Progress Act of last year.
"Take some talking about, too, to make us swallow it whole," muttered
Captain Ambrose.
Dr. Cross was a gracious and eloquent speaker; the village rather liked
her. She talked of babies, as one who knew; no doubt she did know,
having, as she mentioned, had two herself. She grew pathetic in pleading
for the rights of the children to their chance in life. Some of the
mothers wiped their eyes and hugged their infants closer to them; they
should have it, then, so they should. How, said the doctor, were
children to win any of life's prizes without brains? (Jane Delmer looked
self-conscious; she had won a prize for drawing this term; she wondered
if the speaker had heard this.) Even health--how could health be won and
kept without intelligent following of the laws nature has laid down for
us ("I never did none o' that, and look at me, seventy-five next month
and still fit and able," old William Weston was heard to remark), and
how was that to be done without intelligence? Several parents looked
dubious; they were not sure that they wanted any of that in their
households; it somehow had a vague sound of draughts.... After sketching
in outline the probable careers of the intelligent and the unintelligent
infant, between which so wide a gulf was fixed, the doctor discoursed on
heredity, that force so inadequately reckoned with, which moulds the
generations. Appealing to Biblical lore, she enquired if figs were
likely to produce thorns, or thistles grapes. This started William
Weston, who had been a gardener, on strange accidents he had met with in
the vegetable world; Dr. Cross, a gardener too, listened with interest,
but observed that these were freaks and must not, of course, be taken as
the normal; then, to close that subject, she stepped down from the tub,
took the infants Rose and Dean out of their perambulators, and held them
up, one on each arm, to the public gaze. Here, you have, she said, a
certificated child, whose parents received a bonus for it, and an
uncertificated child, whose parents were taxed. Observe the difference
in the two--look at the bright, noticing air of the infant Rose ("Of
course; she's a-jogglin' of it up and down on her arm," said a small
girl who knew the infant Rose). Observe its fine, intelligent little
head (Mrs. Rose preened, gratified). A child who is going to make a good
thing of its life. Now compare it with the lethargy of the other baby,
who lies sucking an india-rubber sucker (a foolish and unclean habit in
itself) and taking no notice of the world about it.
"Why, the poor mite," this infant's parent exclaimed, pushing her way to
the front, "she's been ailing the last two days; it's her pore little
tummy, that's all. And, if you please, ma'am, I'll take her home now.
Holdin' her up to scorn before the village that way--an' you call
yourself a mother!"
"Indeed, I meant nothing against the poor child," Dr. Cross explained,
realising that she had, indeed, been singularly tactless. "She is merely
a type, to illustrate my meaning.... And, of course, it's more than
possible that if you give her a thoroughly good mental training she may
become as intelligent as anyone, in spite of having been so heavily
handicapped by her parents' unregulated marriage. That's where the
Government Mind Training Course will come in. She'll be developed beyond
all belief...."
"She won't," said the outraged parent, arranging her infant in her
perambulator, "be developed or anythin' else. She's comin' home to bed.
And I'd like to know what you mean, ma'am, by unregulated marriage. Our
marriage was all right; it was 'ighly approved, and we got money by this
baby. It's my opinion you've mixed the two children up, and are taking
mine for Mrs. Rose's there, that got taxed, pore mite, owing to Mr. and
Mrs. Rose both being in C class."
"That's right," someone else cried. "It's the other one that was taxed
and ought to be stupid; you've got 'em mixed, ma'am. Better luck next
time."
Dr. Cross collapsed in some confusion, amid good-humoured laughter, and
the infant Rose was also hastily restored to its flattered mother, who,
being only C3, did not quite grasp what had occurred except that her
baby had been held up for admiration and Mrs. Dean's for obloquy, which
was quite right and proper.
"One of nature's accidents," apologised Dr. Cross. "They will happen
sometimes, of course. So will stupid mistakes.... Better luck next time,
as you say." She murmured to Stephen Dixon, "Change the subject at
once," so he got upon the tub and began to talk about Democracy, how it
should control the state, but couldn't, of course, until it was better
educated.
"But all these marriage laws," said a painter who was walking out with
the vicarage housemaid and foresaw financial ruin if they got married,
"they won't help, as I can see, to give _us_ control of the state."
Dixon told him he must look to the future, to his children, in fact. The
painter threw a forward glance at his children, not yet born; it left
him cold. Anyhow, if he married Nellie they'd probably die young, from
starvation.
But, in the main, Dixon's discourse on democracy was popular. Dixon was
a popular speaker with working-men; he had the right touch. But squires
did not like him. Captain Ambrose disliked him very much. It was just
democracy, and all this socialism, that was spoiling the country.
Mr. Delmer ventured to say that he thought the private and domestic
lives of the public ought not to be tampered with.
"Why not?" enquired Stephen Dixon, and Mr. Delmer had not, at the
moment, an answer ready. "When everything else is being tampered with,"
added Dixon. "And surely the more we tamper (if you put it like that) in
the interests of progress, the further removed we are from savages."
Mr. Delmer looked puzzled for a moment, then committed himself, without
sufficient preliminary thought, to a doubtful statement, "Human love
ought to be free," which raised a cheer.
"Free love," Dixon returned promptly, "has never, surely, been advocated
by the best thinkers of Church or State," and while Mr. Delmer blushed,
partly at his own carelessness, partly at the delicacy of the subject,
and partly because Pansy Ponsonby was standing at his elbow, Dixon
added, "Love, like anything else, wants regulating, organising, turning
to the best uses. Otherwise, we become, surely, no better than the other
animals...."
"Isn't he just terribly fierce," observed Pansy in her smiling
contralto, to the world at large.
Mr. Delmer said uncomfortably, "You mistake me, sir. I was not
advocating lawless love. I am merely maintaining that love--if we must
use the word--should not be shackled by laws relating to things which
are of less importance than itself, such as the cultivation of the
intelligence."
"_Is_ it of less importance?" Dixon challenged him.
"The greatest of these three," began the vicar, inaptly, because he was
flustered.
"Quite so," said Dixon; "but St. Paul, I think, doesn't include
intelligence in his three. St. Paul, I believe, was able enough himself
to know how much ability matters in the progress of religion. And, if we
are to quote St. Paul, he, of course, was no advocate of matrimony, but
I think, when carried out at all, he would have approved of its being
carried out on the best possible principles, not from mere casual
impulse and desire.... Freedom," continued Dixon, with the dreamy and
kindled eye which always denoted with him that he was on a pet topic,
"what _is_ freedom? I beg--I do beg," he added hastily, "that no one
will tell me it is mastery of ourselves. I have heard that before. It is
no such thing. Mastery of ourselves is a fine thing; freedom is, or
would be if anyone ever had such a thing, an absurdity, a monstrosity.
It would mean that there would be nothing, either external or internal,
to prevent us doing precisely what we like. No laws of nature, of
morality, of the State, of the Church, of Society...."
Dr. Cross caught Kitty's eye behind him.
"He's off," she murmured. "We must stop him."
Kitty coughed twice, with meaning. It was a signal agreed upon between
the three when the others thought that the speaker was on the wrong
tack. Dixon recalled himself from Freedom with a jerk, and began to talk
about the coming Mind Training Act. He discoursed upon its general
advantages to the citizen, and concluded by saying that Miss Grammont, a
member of the Ministry of Brains, would now explain to them the Act in
detail, and answer any questions they might wish to put. This Miss
Grammont proceeded to do. And this was the critical moment of the
meeting, for the audience, who desired no Act at all, had to be
persuaded that the Act would be a good Act. Kitty outlined it, thinking
how much weaker both Acts and words sound on village greens than in
offices, which is certainly a most noteworthy fact, and one to be
remembered by all politicians and makers of laws. Perhaps it is the
unappreciative and unstimulating atmosphere of stolid distaste which is
so often, unfortunately, to be met with in villages.... Villages are so
stupid; they will not take the larger view, nor see why things annoying
to them personally are necessary for the public welfare. Kitty wished
she were instead addressing a northern manufacturing town, which would
have been much fiercer but which would have understood more about it.
She dealt with emphasis on the brighter sides of the Act, i.e. the
clauses dealing with the pecuniary compensation people would receive for
the loss of time and money which might be involved in undergoing the
Training Course, and those relating to exemptions. When she got to the
Tribunals, a murmur of disapproval sounded.
"They tribunals--we're sick to death of them," someone said. "Look at
the people there are walking about the countryside exempted from the
Marriage Acts, when better men and women has to obey them. The tribunals
were bad enough during the war, everyone knows, but nothing to what they
are now. We don't want any more of those."
This was an awkward subject, as Captain Ambrose was a reluctant chairman
of the Local Mental Progress Tribunal. He fidgeted and prodded the
ground with his stick, while Kitty said, "I quite agree with you. We
don't. But if there are to be exemptions from the Act, local tribunals
are necessary. You can't have individual cases decided by the central
authorities who know nothing of the circumstances. Tribunals must be
appointed who can be relied on to grant exemptions fairly, on the
grounds specified in the Act."
She proceeded to enumerate these grounds. One of them was such poverty
of mental calibre that the possessor was judged quite incapable of
benefiting by the course. A look of hope dawned on several faces; this
might, it was felt, be a way out. The applicant, Kitty explained, would
be granted exemption if suffering from imbecility, extreme
feeble-mindedness, any form of genuine mania, acute, intermittent,
chronic, delusional, depressive, obsessional, lethargic....
Dixon coughed twice, thinking the subject depressing and too technical
for the audience, and Kitty proceeded to outline the various forms of
exemption which might be held, a more cheerful topic. She concluded,
remembering the Minister's instructions, by drawing an inspiring picture
of the changed aspect life would bear after the mind had been thus
improved; how it would become a series of open doors, of chances taken,
instead of a dull closed house. Everything would be so amusing, so
possible, such fun. And they would get on; they would grow rich; there
would be perpetual peace and progress instead of another great war,
which was, alas, all too possible if the world remained as stupid as it
had been up to the present....
Here Kitty's eye lighted unintentionally on her brother Anthony's face,
with the twist of a cynical grin on it, and she collapsed from the
heights of eloquence. It never did for the Grammonts to encounter each
other's eyes when they were being exalted; the memories and experiences
shared by brothers and sisters rose cynically, like rude gamins, to mock
and bring them down.
Kitty said, "If anyone would like to ask any questions...." and got off
the tub.
Someone enquired, after the moment of blankness which usually follows
this invitation, what they would be taught, exactly.
Kitty said there would be many different courses, adapted to differing
requirements. But, in the main, everyone would be taught to use to the
best advantage such intelligence as they might have, in that state of
life to which it might please God to call them.
"And how," pursued the enquirer, a solid young blacksmith, "will the
teachers know what that may be?"
Kitty explained that they wouldn't, exactly, of course, but the minds
which took the course would be so sharpened and improved as to tackle
any work better than before. But there would also be forms to be filled
in, stating approximately what was each individual's line in life.
After another pause a harassed-looking woman at the back said
plaintively, "I'm sure it's all very nice, miss, but it does seem as if
such things might be left to the men. They've more time, as it were. You
see, miss, when you've done out the house and got the children's meals
and put them to bed and cleaned up and all, not to mention washing-day,
and ironing--well, you've not much time left to improve the mind, have
you?"
It was Dr. Cross who pointed out that, the mind once improved, these
household duties would take, at most, half the time they now did. "I
know that, ma'am," the tired lady returned. "I've known girls who set
out to improve their minds, readin' and that, and their house duties
didn't take them any time at all, and nice it was for their families.
What I say is, mind improvement should be left to the men, who've time
for such things; women are mostly too busy, and if they aren't they
should be."
Several men said "Hear, hear" to this. Rural England, as Dr. Cross
sometimes remarked, was still regrettably eastern, or German, in its
feminist views, even now that, since the war, so many more thousands of
women were perforce independent wage-earners, and even now that they had
the same political rights as men. Stephen flung forth a few explosive
views on invidious sex distinctions, another pet topic of his, and
remarked that, in the Christian religion, at least, there was neither
male nor female. A shade of scepticism on the faces of several women
might be taken to hint at a doubt whether the Christian religion, in
this or in most other respects, was life as it was lived, and at a
certainty that it was time for them to go home and get the supper. They
began to drift away, with their children round them, gossiping to each
other of more interesting things than Mind Training. For, after all, if
it was to be it was, and where was the use of talking?
4
It was getting dusk. The male part of the audience also fell away, to
talk in the roads while supper was preparing. Only the vicar was left,
and Captain Ambrose, and Anthony Grammont, and Pansy, who came up to
talk to Kitty.
"My dear," said Pansy, "I feel absolutely flattened out by your
preacher, with his talk of 'the other animals,' and organised love. Now
Mr. Delmer was sweet to me--he said it ought to be free, an' I know he
doesn't really think so, but only said it for my sake and Tony's. But
your man's terrifyin'. I'm almost frightened to have him sleep at the
End House to-night; I'm afraid he'll set fire to the sheets, he's so
hot. Won't you introduce me?"
But Dixon was at this moment engaged in talking to the vicar, who, not
to be daunted and brow-beaten by the notorious Stephen Dixon, was
manfully expounding his position to him and Dr. Cross, while Captain
Ambrose backed him up.
"They may be all night, I should judge from the look of them," said
Kitty, who by now knew her clergyman and her doctor well. "Let's leave
them at it and come home; Tony can bring them along when they're ready."
The End House had offered its hospitality to all the three Explainers,
and they were spending the night there instead of, as usual, at the
village inn. Kitty and Pansy were overtaken before they reached it by
Anthony and Dr. Cross and Dixon.
Pansy said, with her sweet, ingratiating smile, "I was sayin' to Kitty,
Mr. Dixon, that you made me feel quite bad with your talk about free
love."
"I'm sorry," said Dixon, "but it was the vicar who talked of that, not
I. I talked of organised love. I never talk of free love: I don't like
it."
"I noticed you didn't," said Pansy. "That's just what I felt so bad
about. Mind you, I think you're awfully right, only it takes so much
livin' up to, doesn't it? with things tangled up as they are.... Sure
you don't mind stayin' with us, I suppose?" She asked it innocently,
rolling at him a sidelong glance from her beautiful music-hall eyes.
Dixon looked at sea. "Mind?..."
"Well, you might, mightn't you, as ours is free." Then, at his puzzled
stare, "Why, Kitty, you surely told him!"
"I'm afraid I never thought of it," Kitty faltered. "She means," she
explained, turning to the two guests, "that she and my brother aren't
exactly married, you know. They can't be, because Pansy has a husband
somewhere. They would if they could; they'd prefer it."
"We'd prefer it," Pansy echoed, a note of wistfulness in her calm voice.
"Ever so much. It's _much_ nicer, isn't it?--as you were sayin'. We
think so too, don't we, old man?" She turned to Anthony but he had
stalked ahead, embarrassed by the turn the conversation was taking. He
was angry with Kitty for not having explained the situation beforehand,
angry with Pansy for explaining it now, and angry with Dixon for not
understanding without explanation.
"But I do hope," Pansy added to both her guests, slipping on her
courteous and queenly manner, "that you will allow it to make no
difference."
Dr. Cross said, "Of course not. What do you imagine?" She was a little
worried by the intrusion of these irrelevant domestic details into a
hitherto interesting evening. Pansy's morals were her own concern, but
it was a pity that her taste should allow her to make this awkward
scene.
But Dixon stopped, and, looking his hostess squarely in the face--they
were exactly of a height--said, "I am sorry, but I am afraid it does
make a difference. I hate being rude, and I am most grateful to you for
your hospitable invitation; but I must go to the inn instead."
Pansy stared back, and a slow and lovely rose colour overspread her
clear face. She was not used to being rebuffed by men.
"I'm frightfully sorry," Stephen Dixon repeated, reddening too. "But,
you see, if I slept at your house it would be seeming to acquiesce in
something which I believe it to be tremendously important not to
acquiesce in.... Put it that I'm a prig ... anyhow, there it is.... Will
you apologise for me to your brother?" he added to Kitty, who was
looking on helplessly, conscious that the situation was beyond her. "And
please forgive me--I know it seems unpardonable rudeness." He held out
his hand to Pansy, tentatively. She took it, without malice. Pansy was
not a rancorous woman.
"That's all right, Mr. Dixon. If you can't swallow our ways, you just
can't, and there's an end of it. Lots of people can't, you know. Good
night. I hope you'll be comfortable."
5
Kitty looked after him with a whistle.
"I'm fearfully sorry, Pansy love. I never thought to expatiate
beforehand on Tony and you.... I introduced you as Miss Ponsonby--but I
suppose he never noticed, or thought you were the Cheeper's governess or
something. Who'd have thought he'd take on like that? But you never
know, with the clergy; they're so unaccountable."
"I'm relieved, a bit," Pansy said. "I was frightened of him, that's a
fact."
Dr. Cross said, "The queer thing about Stephen Dixon is that you never
know when he'll take a thing in this way and when he won't. I've known
him sit at tea in the houses of the lowest slum criminals--by the way,
that is surely the scriptural line--and I've known him cut in the street
people who were doing the same things in a different way--a sweating
shopowner, for instance. I sometimes think it depends with him on the
size and comfort of the house the criminal lives in, which is too
hopelessly illogical, you'd think, for an intelligent man like him. I
lose my patience with him sometimes, I confess. But anyhow he knows his
own mind."
"He's gone," Pansy said to Anthony, who was waiting for them at the
gate. "He thinks it's important not to acquiesce in us. So he's gone to
the inn.... By the way, I nearly told him that the innkeeper is leading
a double life too--ever so much worse than ours--but I thought it would
be too unkind, he'd have had to sleep on the green."
"Well," Anthony said crossly, "we can get on without him. But another
time, darling, I wish you'd remember that there's not the least need to
explain our domestic affairs in the lane to casual acquaintances, even
if they do happen to be spending the night. It's simply not done, you
know! It makes a most embarrassing situation all round. I know you're
not shy, but you might remember that I am."
"Sorry, old dear," said Pansy. "There's been so much explainin' this
evenin' that I suppose I caught it.... You people," she added to Dr.
Cross and Kitty, "have got awkwarder things to explain than I have. I'd
a long sight rather have to explain free love than love by Act of
Parliament."
"But on the whole," said the doctor, relieved to have got on to that
subject again after the rather embarrassing interlude of private
affairs, "I thought the meeting this evening not bad. What did you
think, Miss Grammont?"
"I should certainly," said Kitty, "have expected it to have been worse.
If I had been one of the audience, it would have been."
6
Some of the subsequent meetings of that campaign, in fact, were. But not
all. On the whole, as Dr. Cross put it, they were not bad.
"It's a toss-up," said Dixon at the end, "how the country is going to
take this business. There's a chance, a good fighting chance, that they
may rise to the idea and accept it, even if they can't like it. It
depends a lot on how it's going to be worked, and that depends on the
people at the top. And for the people at the top, all one can say is
that there's a glimmer of hope. Chester himself has got imagination; and
as long as a man's got that he may pull through, even if he's head of a
government department.... Of course one main thing is not to make
pledges; they can't be kept; everyone knows they can't be kept, as
situations change, and when they break there's a row.... Another
thing--the rich have got to set the example; they must drop this having
their fun and paying for it, which the poor can't afford. If that's
allowed there'll be revolution. Perhaps anyhow there'll be revolution.
And revolutions aren't always the useful things they ought to be; they
sometimes lead to reaction. Oh, you Brains people have got to be jolly
careful."
A week later the Mind Training Bill became an Act. It did, in fact, seem
to be a toss-up how the public, that strange, patient, unaccountable
dark horse, were going to take it. That they took it at all, and that
they continued to take the Mental Progress Act, was ascribed by
observant people largely to the queer, growing, and quite peculiar
influence of Nicholas Chester. It was an odd influence for a minister of
the government to have in this country; one would have almost have
supposed him instead a power of the Press, the music-hall stage, or the
cinema world. It behoved him, as Dixon said to be jolly careful.